Saturday, May 18, 2013

Because the world is going to shit and not even the glamour of Cannes is safe.

Anyways.

There were no snaps of big Bolly stars, but instead we had the premiere of Monsoon Shootout!

Look who we have here! The man who emerged as one of my favorite interview subjects last year... Mr. Nawazuddin Siddiqui! With Tannishtha Chatterjee, who we'll be seeing in Gulaab Gang and Vijay Verma. Along with director Amit Kumar.

Not India related but just because I love his work... Koreeda Hirokazu and the cast of 『そして父になる』

If you haven't seen Nobody Knows, pull out a box of kleexex and get to it.

But I'm mostly including this because that tall drink of water is Fukuyama Masaharu, who is one of my favorite Japanese celebrities! The closest parallel I can draw is to imagine Ali Zaffar in about 15 years - singer turned actor with chocolate box looks and a deep melodious voice. He is consistently rated one of the top panty-droppers in Japan, for obvious reasons.

See what I mean, ladies?!

Lastly, here is an interview with Miike Takashi about Shield of Straw, which should be awesome. As are all of his films.

Regarding the responsibility that a director has to society, first of all, there are ratings. There’s freedom to make films, and freedom to watch them or not. It’s not like I take those films to a school and force kids to watch them. In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a feeling of excitement: What if the film is scarier than I thought it’s going to be? You’re taken into that world. Nowadays, you can sit in the theater and know it’s going to be safe. That’s good for business, but not for filmmaking. I have lines in my mind about what is too violent or shocking to show. It’s a difficult issue. I don’t think a film that has no effect on people or society is a good film.